


Things I should have done

by Umidunnostuff



Category: haikyuu
Genre: Character Death, M/M, Poor Kags, Sadness, im sorry, lots of feels guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 12:35:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5005003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umidunnostuff/pseuds/Umidunnostuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kageyama is in a coma, and Hinata has regrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things I should have done

When Kageyama got sick, there was no warning. No hit on the head or car crash or major injury. Just one day he was in school, and in practice, tossing to Hinata and grumbling and glaring, drinking his milk and walking home with Hinata in the evening just as usual. Hinata remembered every detail, and could remember every sensation of their last day together. He remembered how the steaming pork bun tasted better when he laughed around a mouthful, how the weight of his bike slowed his pace as he walked, choosing to arrive home long after dark just so that he could spend more time with Kageyama. He always dragged out their time together, just to see as much as he could of the tall setter, but now it all felt too short.

The need day at practice, when he entered there was no sound of sound of squeaking sneakers or boisterous encouragement. All that was there was heavy, oppressive quiet. The atmosphere was saturated with solemnity, eerily empty. Where usually the gym was full of light and life and volleyball, now it was silent, too empty and dark. 

Takeda and Ukai were standing together, faces wearing matching expressions of solemnity, the rest of the team clustered around them. When they heard Hinata enter, his teammates turned, and seeing who it was, gave a look of the deepest, most heart-wrenching sadness and pity Hinata had ever seen. Still clueless, Hinata jogged up to them.

"Guys? What's happening? Why's everyone moping around?" His wide eyes were examining their faces worriedly, wondering what could be so wrong. The seniors shared a look, Daichi and Suga having a silent conversation with their eyes, before Daichi seemed to steel himself, and Suga stepped forward, resting a gentle hand on Hinata's shoulder.

"Wha-" he was cut off when Daichi spoke.

"It's Kageyama. Apparently..."here Daichi lost his composure, choked on a breath, almost sobbing before he got a hold on it and continued," apparently he had a stroke... He's in a coma, and they don't know if he'll get better." Here his eyes did well up, tears threatening to spill over as he tried to hold himself together for the team. Suga squeezed his shoulder, warm and comforting despite the silent tears streaming down his face, but Hinata noticed none of it. His mind was blank. Kageyama? In a coma? He couldn't wrap his head around it. It couldn't be Kageyama because Kageyama had promised, he had said the he would always toss to him, he had said that as long as he was there that Hinata would be invincible. Now though... Now Kageyama wasn't there, and Hinata was far from invincible.

He didn't notice the tears until his knees buckled. He found himself on the floor, tears streaming from his face, sobs wracking his body. He vaguely heard Ukai telling them all to go home, that practice was cancelled, and heard the soft shuffle as people left the room, but Hinata didn't move. Not when Suga squeezed his shoulder again, trying to smile through the tears, and not when Tanaka slapped his back while sobbing wholeheartedly, arm in arm with nishinoya, eyes and nose streaming unabashedly. Even Tsukishima tried to offer comfort, dry eyed but solemn looking. He eventually left when Ukai threatened to lock him in. Left to slump next to his bike and cry some more.

It was jarring really, because one moment Kageyama was there, racing him to practice, or arguing about homework, constant and solid and there, and the next he was all but erased from his life, in some sterile hospital room, cold and pale and hooked up to some machine that beeps. Hinata wishes he had said more, done more, hit more tosses, argued and raced and shouted, and he wished that he had told Kageyama how he felt. He had left it unsaid, his attraction to the taller boy, for what seemed now like silly reasons, because now he could never get the chance to say it. Hinata would never get the chance to tell him about how much he depended on him, believed in his tosses and his skills, how he sometimes noticed the little proud smirks in the corner of his eye and loved them, loved that Kageyama looked at him with that little glint in his eye. His mind was full of 'could haves' things that he could have had, if Hinata had just said something, crammed more into their short friendship. That night Hinata didn't sleep.

The next day, the team skipped practice to visit the hospital where Kageyama was staying. It was as bad but somehow worse than Hinata had visualized. The room was cold and white, the hallway filled with the hopeless sentiment of dozens of cases just like this. Only a couple people were let in at a time, and in between they were delegated to a waiting room with Kageyamas mother. It was not the first time Hinata had met her, a slender woman with the same cornsilk fine black hair, greying at the edges, as Kageyama, but without his constant grimace. Her eyes always held a steeliness though, a sort of regality that resembled the king of the court, that demanded respect. She welcomed them softly, eyes dry but obviously red rimmed. The team was quiet in the sterile halls, Tanaka and Nishinoya eerily so, considering their usual personalities. Hinata listened Kageyama's mothers explanation of his condition, but large portions of it went in one ear and out the other, failing to penetrate the dog of melancholy that he was trapped in. Something about low HDL, narrowed arteries, damage to the brain. The word vegetative was thrown in there somewhere, but then Hinata was being ushered in and it was much worse.

There was Kageyama, laid out like a body on a slab, skin almost blue and looking paper thin. There was a machine in the room, beeping mockingly, as if to count down the number of heartbeats he had left. Hinata could not possibly hope to describe how wrong Kageyama looked in this setting. In his eyes, Kageyama should always exist in the flush of exertion, the heat of a game, the blush of attraction, at just the stuffiness of a classroom. He wasn't someone who should ever look this lifeless. Hinata stroked a finger across his hand, unable to bring himself to touch any more of the clammy skin, because that just made it all the more real. It was looking less and less like a terrible dream and more and more like bleak reality. Before he knew it the tears were coming again, softly now, just a drop or two rolling down his cheeks, plopping gently onto the bedsheets and soaking in. They stayed, offered condolences to Kageyama's mother, talked to an unresponsive Kageyama in the desperate hope that he would stir, losing hope with every word, until they were all gutted and empty. 

When Hinata climbed onto his bike finally, he felt like a husk of himself. He pedaled as fast as he could, feeling his legs burn from the exertion and relishing the pain, the feeling of something besides hopelessness and loss. 

The next few weeks passed in a blur of nothing but school and volleyball, punctuated by visits to a hospital room that grew more bleak every day, the beep of the machine constant and haunting. To forget, Hinata threw himself into volleyball, played until he felt like his limbs were burning, and then some. Not for any will to get stronger, but in an attempt to forget. It didn't work. No matter how many flying falls he did, how much he ran, how many of Suga's tosses he hit, he only missed Kageyama more. He didn't cry anymore, he felt like he had none left, and the ache for Kageyama faded into the background. Occasionally it flared up. Leaving practice and starting to walk the bike, before remembering that he had no reason to anymore, or turning to make a joke about a teachers hair, before noticing the empty seat. Sometimes a hope surfaced, that he would wake up, miraculously recover. That was just a pipe dream, Hinata tried to tell himself. It's not going to happen, he tried to convince himself. Nothing he could do would ever squash that hope, not while Kageyama was still breathing. 

On his visits he started talking in earnest, thinking that Kageyama wouldn't want to miss anything, would want to know about they won practice match, or that Hinata grew a centimeter, or that he had misse. Another test. He would want to know them for when he woke up.

That hope, the tiny spark in his center, made it all the worse when the call came. When Hinata got the call from Kageyama's mother, the spark flared up. Was he awake? Had he recovered and that was why she was calling? It was subsequently crushed by the oncoming news. They were pulling the plug. His brain was unresponsive, he would never recover so they were letting him go. His hand was shaking so badly that Hinata wasn't sure why he hadn't dropped his phone yet. It felt like the first day again, all the weight of the loss of his best friend hitting him like a truck all over again. Phone abandoned after a hasty farewell, that may have been unintelligible through the mass that seemed to have formed in his throat, Hinata sprinted out of the house and to his bike, not pausing to put on a coat. 

When he arrived the entire team was there again, drawing more parallels to that first day when his life started to crumble. He was accepted into the huddle, guided to the front of the group by some silent agreement. His legs hit the edge of the bed in the crowded room, and he scrunched his hands in the thin fabric to stop them from shaking too badly.

Kageyama's mother stood at the head of the bed, poised like she was about to start some sort of performance. Perhaps a play, one that ends with actors strewn across the stage, dead until the curtain falls, alive again when it is time to bow. Here though, there is no curtain rise, no bow. The machine is switched off, and that god forsaken beeping finally stops. In the back of his mind, the part not occupied by the ache in his throat, the burning in the back of his eyes and the quivering in his body hat he can no longer ignore, Hinata is thankful for this. Kageyama breathes for several minutes, that feel like eternities, and as his breathing slows, the sounds of despair in the room grow.

Daichi hand, which had been resting on Hinata's shoulder in support, was now gripping too tight, and Suga had buried his head in Daichi's shoulder. Asahi, Tanaka and Nishinoya were all sobbing loudly, and Yamaguchi was sobbing softly while clinging to Tsukishima, who had his head tilted away, the faint tracks of tears visible on his cheeks. 

Hinata was finally brave enough to take Kagayamas hand, to feel as it went from cool to frigid, felt as the warmth left his body, and to wish that he had been brave enough to take this hand when it was still alive. When it was still warm and moving, long slender fingers able to entwine with his own, to squeeze his hand back, or stroke his palm with its thumb, there were so many things that Hinata should have done in retrospect, but he would have to settle for this. He cried, as Kageyama's chest finally stilled, and the faint pulse in his wrist gave out.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I wrote this instead of writing for the two ongoing stories that I have going. Yay. I am so sorry Kageyama, my poor child. And Hinata too. Anyways if you liked this feel free to make one shot requests at my tumblr, umidunnothings.


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